Written by Carl R. Trueman |
Tuesday, November 9, 2021
The Reformation, Protestant and Catholic, may have been fueled by pamphlets. But who, beyond a small group of scholars, reads those pamphlets today? To the rest of us they are, at best, the throwaway productions of a bygone age, at worst an example of the way in which human beings can treat each other with pride and venom and no concern for the truth. 

It is in many ways odd that we observe Reformation Day on October 31. Setting aside the somewhat fruitless debates about whether Luther actually posted the Ninety-Five Theses on the Wittenberg castle church door on that day in 1517 (for the record, I believe he did), it is well-known that he had said more radical things about the Church before (for example, in his Disputation Against Scholastic Theology in September 1517) and would do so again shortly afterward (at the Heidelberg Disputation in April 1518). Intellectually, either is a better candidate for the dating of the inception of the Reformation than the often obscure theses against indulgences that triggered Luther’s rise to fame.
Still, the very obscurity of many of the individual theses points to an interesting element in the Reformation’s popular success. The Reformation was not a popular success solely—or even primarily—because the populace read and embraced the arguments of the Reformers. As a Protestant, I rejoice that the Reformers carried the day in many places, with their appropriate emphasis on biblical authority, divine grace, and the finished work of Christ. They recovered the gospel and paved the way for many of the freedoms we in the West now take for granted. But I am not naïve enough to believe that they won simply by force of argument. Few people would have had the background to understand the issues, and that would have applied to many subsequent debates, particularly regarding the real presence of Christ in the Lord’s Supper. Few members of the populace could actually read. So what made the Reformation a popular success in so many places?
There is no simple answer to this, but a key element was the pamphlet war: the production of short, cheap, polemical publications, often illustrated with woodcuts, that served to shape the mind of the populace. Both Protestants and Catholics engaged in this pamphlet war, which was perhaps the first battle for the popular mind in Western history. What is interesting about these pamphlets is that they were not in general designed to seek and establish truth, but rather to discredit the opposition. It takes no advanced degree in theology to understand the intended message of woodcuts depicting the pope being excreted from the backside of a horned and cloven-hoofed devil. And it takes no training in Thomist metaphysics to understand the intended message of sexually explicit pictures of Luther and his wife. It is also rather obvious what kind of publication—major expositions of the faith by Calvin and Bellarmine, or the penny dreadfuls that the presses churned out in vast numbers—had more immediate effect.
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Matthes argues for the power of the pulpit—or what she labels “sermonic influence” on political and cultural life. Such an influence, she demonstrates, has proven especially notable during times of national crisis: it is here that Protestant sermons have resonated with the greatest force.

In her new book, When Sorrow Comes: The Power of Sermons from Pearl Harbor to Black Lives Matter, Melissa M. Matthes argues for two claims. First and most fundamentally, that Protestant ministers should assume a more active public role addressing political and legal affairs, and that, in doing so, they should be met with greater acceptance as national and community leaders whose guidance truly matters. Second, that Protestant clergy espousing theological liberalism provide the greatest opportunity to enlighten public discourse and strengthen the common good.
Her work succeeds admirably on the first score, but is open to a more ambivalent assessment on the second.
The Public Power of the Pulpit
Matthes centers her work on American Protestantism and justifies her limited purview on the “cultural dominance” of Protestantism in the United States—a position of demographic preeminence still evidenced by how the majority of the religiously self-identified are some form of Protestant, and that over 80 percent of African Americans number themselves as Protestant Christians.
From this Protestant-centered perspective, Matthes argues for the power of the pulpit—or what she labels “sermonic influence” on political and cultural life. Such an influence, she demonstrates, has proven especially notable during times of national crisis: it is here that Protestant sermons have resonated with the greatest force. This is so because, despite the secularization of American culture, many Americans still look to the country’s most prominent confession, especially for consolation in moments of collective crisis and in the aftershocks of largescale national tragedies.
In defending the public role of Protestant ministers, Matthes makes her stand against the claims of some strict separationists like Andras Sajo, who argues that “social, political, and legal arrangement[s]” must “not allow considerations based on the transcendental or the sacred.” Matthes argues that when the nation wrestles with tragedy, ministers should be listened to by citizens and policymakers alike, with their messages taken as sources of politically relevant insight. This follows, she argues, from the first principles of democratic legitimacy. If the people wish religious inspiration to guide their personal and public response to collective tragedy, the people have every right to have just this; to deny it would be to reject in Richard Parker’s lofty words that “here, the people rule.”
We can add to her arguments the recognition that, in times of crisis and grieving, there would be something coldly indifferent about a strong separation of church and state in the way Sajo recommends. If people seek comfort and guidance from religion in times of tragedy, to demand that they have only an aesthetic comfort, without any cognitive guidance—to say that they may lose themselves in dirges and requiems but take no heed of the sermons accompanying them—is to give cold comfort, indeed.
Having shown that religion still plays a powerful role in the limited arena of collective sorrow, Matthes argues that an opening is forged for seeing Protestant religiosity in a more positive light outside times of national tragedy. This positive influence is disclosed, she maintains, in the way the faith engenders a concern for those in need and on the margins of social and economic life. Specifically, she says religion can promote the common good apart from crises because it can speak so helpfully to just what Sajo and others say must remain the province of secular political advocacy: human rights and human progress.
In taking this stand, Matthes responds to the counterargument that, once re-affirmed in the public square, public religion with its diversity of sects might exacerbate existing social tensions. Theological disagreement, she contends, does not negate the positive contributions of religion to the common good. A diversity of ministerial voices can actually serve to stimulate the American people to greater reflection. Her point seems to be that serious debate about the implications of the transcendent truths religion advances witnesses to the seriousness of truth and transcendence in a way that can provoke our increasingly “apatheistic” age—an age indifferent to the claims of religious transcendence—to concern itself with the truth of the matters these ministers debate. Even when expounding differing theologies, therefore, the Protestant pulpit proves its value by stimulating us to enter into a state of mind “where seeking the Truth is a lifelong project.”
A Genealogy of Political Religion
Notwithstanding this recognition of the value of pluralism, Matthes’s work argues that a particular kind of theology should exercise the greatest influence on public life. The liberal theology that underwrote the homilies delivered by mid-century liberal Protestants following the tragedy of the Pearl Harbor attack should be recovered, deepened, and deployed as a religious witness in the United States today.
Matthes develops this claim by providing a fascinating survey of American Protestant sermons delivered in the wake of nationally salient crises: not only the Pearl Harbor attack, but also the assassination of JFK, the assassination of MLK, the 9/11 attacks, and the Newtown massacre. She appears to present this review as a social science exercise, but that approach seems inconsistent with the logic of her project. The samples of sermons she reviews are far too few to serve the purpose of a positivist social science exercise. Instead, the project appears much more to be a selective culling of sermons that advance what she sees as distinct theological types—and an argument for the superiority of one such theological position.
Her work, if not fully described as such, is more akin to a genealogy in the Nietzschean sense. As Allan Parson remarks, for Nietzsche, genealogy is “arrived through processes of exclusion and inclusion” by which our pressing contemporary needs shape our conceptualizations of past events. Genealogy, for Nietzsche, is “not to be thought of as purely historical,” but as the construction of a stage on which values are placed in contention, even as we make use of selected specimens from the “long hieroglyphic record” to build our accounts.
Matthes’s genealogy starts in the Alpine heights of mid-century liberal theological promise. Protestant theology by the early 1940s had liberated itself from the Fundamentalists—a bruising battle quite truculently fought throughout the 1920s and 1930s, and from which liberalism clearly emerged triumphant, as large numbers of traditionalists were driven out of the mainline denominations. This triumphant theology still remained vigorously Christian in self-identification, but gone were notions of special divine providence, or of God working through the course of human events.
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You might be thinking that your friendships are different. They really are authentic and life-long. Maybe. And if so, that’s awesome. But try this. As much as you’re enjoying the relationship (as they likely are), do something associated with your position they don’t like and see what happens.

Over the last year and a bit, I’ve talked to so many leaders who are distraught over how many friends—often people they thought of as close friends—have left their church. And when they left, they also ended the friendship.
Friends they’ve worked with or served with end up no longer being friends—quitting the church, leaving staff, or even walking out for good over a disagreement.
Leaders have struggled with the problem for years. Pastors, even more so.
No surprise, but this phenomenon intensified over the last two years as COVID isolated people and culture became more divided on almost every issue.
First of all, I empathize. It’s happened to me too. It hurts, sometimes at the soul level. And friendships—being the unique relationships they are—once built are often difficult to replace.
That said, I’ve also had decades to find a different perspective.
Ready for a contrary view?
What if they were never your friends?
I’m not trying to be mean or question your relational IQ.
I get it. You’re saying, “But we had dinner with these people. We went on vacations together. We were at each other’s houses all the time. Our kids played together. We were close.”
I realize that.
But, again, the question—what if they were never actually your friends?
I know, you’re thinking, What????But hear me out.
True friendships don’t depend on your leadership. They depend on the relationship.
And as long as you’re the leader, you’ve got a few variables in the friendship that make it hard to discern whether this is truly a friendship that will survive your leadership.
You know the stereotype of the business leader who retires and is later shocked to discover his phone never rings and everyone he used to hang out with isn’t interested in him anymore.
A similar thing happens to pastors and church leaders.
I’m going to share why that’s the case, but hang on to the end for some hope.
Understanding the unique dynamics of leadership and friendships should make pain of processing relational transitions easier, not harder.
Why It’s Weird: The Problem Is Your Power
Aside from any normal relational struggles you and I bring to life (welcome to the human race—we all do), leadership brings a strange dynamic to any friendship—power.
Even if your leadership’s approach leans egalitarian, and you see yourself as equal to your team—not above them—the challenge remains: you hold power.
Beyond the power to hire and fire, you also hold the power to determine the mission and direction of the organization. Your words weigh more, and you have the clout that simply accompanies the position you hold, whether you feel like you do or not.
I’ve done everything I can to shake the power imbalance over several decades in leadership and use my power to benefit others. Still, the dynamic remains: As a leader, you hold power.
As a result—and here’s the dynamic—people build relationships with you for reasons other than just pure friendship.
Sometimes they’ve built a relationship with you because they want to be close to their leader, or they want some influence over the organization’s future direction. Other times, they’re just drawn to the leader’s charisma.
That’s not cynical; that’s just real. And they may not even realize they’re doing it. You likely won’t know it’s happening.
Except it is.
They’ll use the term ‘friend,’ and it will resemble a real friendship in many ways.
But it will always be influenced by the power dynamic.
Flex that power in the wrong direction, say the wrong thing, or make the wrong move (whatever that is), and the friendship strains or dissolves.
The problem when you’re friends with a leader often isn’t relational; it’s positional.
Why Pastoring Is Even Weirder: Ministry Is the Perfect Storm
I spent over two decades as a pastor in a local church. If you think leadership is weird, ministry is weirder.
Here’s why.
Ministry is the perfect storm: work, faith, and community collide.
When I was in law, those spheres of my life were more separate and clear. I worked at a law firm by day, had a church I was part of evenings and weekends and had friends from many parts of life.
When I entered full-time vocational ministry, everything melted into one.
Ministry is strange.
What you believe is also what you do. And the people you serve are also your community.
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